Our 17-year-old daughter just enrolled at a small nearby college to take some of the preliminary coursework she’ll need for the tech field she’ll be entering. Since she is now on the email list of the college’s announcements, she jokingly said she was tempted to attend an upcoming event.

“What kind of event?” I asked her.

She read the announcement out loud: “Enjoy a theatrical performance promoting dialogue and understanding around diversity, cultural sensitivity and social justice.”

I burst out laughing. “Could they possibly cram in any more buzzwords?”

“I can’t imagine a worse evening than watching a bunch of social justice warriors trying to dialogue about diversity,” she agreed.

Our daughter is concentrating on the core classes she’ll need for her certification and has no patience or interest in attending a theatrical performance full of buzzwords. A performance of Shakespeare, sure. Celtic music, absolutely. But a theater full of social justice warriors spouting empty feel-good phrases? Puh-lease.

In nations where survival is a priority, you don’t find social justice warriors putting on diversity dialogues. It simply doesn’t happen. People are far too occupied with everyday issues – food, shelter, security. In nations at war, nations with scare resources, nations with despotic dictators – you won’t find theatrical performances “promoting dialogue and understanding around diversity, cultural sensitivity and social justice.”

But you do in Western nations such as Europe, Canada and America. Why?

Because despite the downturn in our economy and the unforgiving job market, these nations still have great freedoms and great abundance. It was that very freedom that created the abundance in the first place. Of course there are many ups and downs, challenges and failures, but on the whole people are not dying of starvation in the streets.

Therefore these nations can afford to do things contrary to their survival. Diversity, contrary to survival? Social justice, contrary to survival? You bet.

Abundance and freedom are wonderful things, and I wouldn’t wish their absence on anyone. But there is a small downside to these blessings: they make us soft. When our time, attention and energy are not focused on the daily struggles of making a living and providing for our families, then we have the leisure to tilt at the windmills of phantom enemies.

Soft people don’t understand harsh reality. If someone’s widdle psyche is hurt by “micro-aggressions” everywhere he turns, he’s simply not equipped to handle brutal barbarism and naked violence. If someone has the time and energy to dialogue about social justice, it means she has the freedom and full bellies to do so; but if that situation reverses, these people won’t have the mental hardness necessary to handle adversity when it hits.

The relative freedoms and abundance of Western nations are why political correctness and feel-good policies have taken over; and even more ironically, it’s what will contribute – if uncorrected – to the downfall of these nations.

Contra-survival, as my husband defines it, is doing something that flies in the face of common sense and is ultimately detrimental to the health, safety and security of a nation. Think about everything that’s going on in Europe and North America and list the numbers of things that fit that definition.

Nations with leisure and abundance forget what raw brutal survival is like. They graciously invite in barbarians to share that leisure and abundance, and then are bewildered with they are repaid with rapes, mayhem, death and destruction.

For example, recently in Sweden – formerly an abundant nation where socialist ideals apparently worked, to hear progressives say it – several organizations who were “hoping to start a dialogue on gender equality” distributed copies of “We Should All Be Feminists” to every high school sophomore in the country.

According to this article, “Sweden is a place where ‘gender mainstreaming’ is a key governmental strategy to ensuring equality, with 12 of 24 government ministers currently women. ‘Gender equality is one of the cornerstones of Swedish society,’ Sweden’s official gender equality website says.”

But what happens when gender equality hits gender inequality? I don’t think any of us need to be reminded what’s going on in Sweden at the moment. Barbarians aren’t interested in dialoguing about diversity or discussing cultural sensitivity. When social justice warriors meet ISIS warriors, guess who wins?

Sweden has acted contrary to its survival. It’s been so long since they’ve had to deal with brutality that their population has grown soft. They’ve cultivated social justice warriors rather than real warriors. Barbarians don’t want social justice, dialogues about diversity, or gender equality. They only want to win.

This brings me back to the theatrical performance at our daughter’s college. Let’s face it, only in a soft and abundant society could such a performance even be thought of. When resources are scarce, no one is going to dialogue about buzzwords. When the economy collapses or diseases are rampant, no one is going to care about cultural sensitivity. When the barbarians are at the gate, we’re going to need real warriors, not social justice warriors.

As one person put it, “My prediction: When the guns begin to shoot, all this PC crap goes out the window, but there will be terrible price to pay. There will be blood.”

I’m perfectly aware the notion of contra-survival will fall on deaf ears of the social justice warriors. Bred to the mistaken notion that our abundance can never change or that our freedoms will ever be challenged, they happily apply their time, energy and talents to making the rest of us miserable on a day to day basis.

But they’re fighting the wrong enemy. The enemy isn’t “micro-aggression” from innocent people just going about their business; the enemy is the insane policies our government is implementing, which will ultimately result in the barbarians coming through the gate (literally) – astoundingly, at our own invitation.